


No Word For Yes

by copperbadge



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Alien Mythology/Religion, Backstory, M/M, suspect latin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-07-14
Updated: 2008-07-14
Packaged: 2017-12-07 04:44:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/744384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/copperbadge/pseuds/copperbadge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Someday he will have a Jack-to-English dictionary. Though it will contain more than just the words, he supposes. And be unsuitable for children.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Word For Yes

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Adina for beta-reading!
> 
> This was written just after Torchwood S2/Doctor Who S4, so does not incorporate any canon past that point.

It's really unfair to weathermen, what the Daleks and the Doctor have done to Earth. 

It's not as though Cardiff is dry at the best of times but for the past week and a half it's been pissing down out almost constantly; flooding is becoming a real threat but not an unavoidable one yet, mainly because when it's not raining it's unbearably hot and sunny out. Jack, who has done some calculations on one of the computers, is confident it won't actually flood and says the thunderstorms will wash away the last of the bad weather from Earth's displacement. Jack's instruments are pretty fine-tuned and he knows how to use them; Ianto wouldn't be surprised if a few poor sods at the weather service, on the other hand, are drinking heavily to combat the confusion they must feel whenever they look at their readouts. 

But the thunderstorms are brilliant, all crackling bolts and loud clap-bangs, a good excuse to stay in. A better excuse yet is Gwen's latest "training exercise" idea, which translates to her and Martha and Mickey in the Hub for the night, running drills to get the new kids up to standard. It's good training for Gwen, too, now officially second-in-command, and to facilitate matters and make sure Gwen's authority is established Jack is -- 

Ianto smiles as he stands at the window, watching the rain fall. Jack is behind him, on his bed, a cup of cocoa cradled in his hands and _Histoire de Ma Vie_ for reading material. 

_"I like a long book," Jack said to Gwen once, when she asked why he had a bound set of Richardson's_ Clarissa _on his bookshelf. "I have the time to read them, anyway."_

_To Ianto, later, he added the disclaimer, "I thought there would be more sex in it. Turns out it's about not having sex."_

_"Why did you keep it?"_

_"Have you ever tried to unload a nine volume novel about people not having sex?"_

Jacques Casanova's autobiography definitely qualifies as a long book, anyway; the volume in Jack's hands is number twelve of thirty ("Return to Paris"). It's also in French, which means that whenever he asks Jack to translate some for him he gets essentially the "good parts version" of the life of Casanova. Jack chooses his passages with care, so while Jack may be reading the whole thing Ianto only ever gets about five minutes at a time before Jack tries something scurrilous or scandalous or otherwise enjoyable. To be fair, given what Jack reads him, sometimes it's Ianto who tries it.

Well, it works for them.

The comm in his ear buzzes. "Ianto."

"Go ahead, Mickey," he says.

"Hourly check-in. All systems go."

Ianto smiles faintly. Mickey is very Mission Impossible. Ianto prefers James Bond, but really he'd like it best if Mickey would just stop fucking around and be himself. 

"Thank you, Mickey. How's Gwen treating you?"

"We're running invasion procedures."

"Thrilling. I'm ringing off; don't bother with check-ins until morning unless something comes up. Mobile's handy."

"Night, Ianto."

"G'night," Ianto says, and takes the earpiece out. 

"Hub not flooded yet?" Jack asks.

"I checked the pumps before I left for the day."

"Reliable Ianto," Jack says, and Ianto twists without moving his feet, to grin at him over his shoulder. "Still coming down out there."

"Yes." Ianto turns back to the window. There's a flash of lightning and an almost immediate thunderclap that makes the windowpanes rattle. 

"If the window blows in you'll get strafed," Jack points out.

"This is good British craftsmanship."

"Like I said." Jack sips his cocoa, ignoring Ianto's derisive snort. "Also, I can't believe how domestic I'm about to be."

"Oh yes?"

"Yes. Ianto, come to bed."

Ianto does turn then, crossing through the dim room, sitting on the edge of his bed and checking that the mobile's ringer-volume is up. 

"How's Casanova?" he asks, settling next to Jack and peering over his shoulder. "Still French, I see."

"Italian," Jack corrects.

"Yes, I'm aware. Venetian, if memory serves. Written in French, though."

Jack squirms a little closer, his shoulder bumping Ianto's chest. " _Thus he spoke only from his head, and his -- not from his heart,_ " he reads, and Ianto recognises the awkward cadence of instant translation. " _I spoke, said, that this thing was acceptable at some times, but that at some times the happiness of man, of a man, was connected with his freedom from bindings._ Social bindings," Jack appends, glancing up at him with a filthy smile. 

"Good advice," Ianto decides.

" _This proceeded from the tender love I wished to show the boy,_ " he continues. " _To his mother I said, it was necessary to make him detest a lie but you should have wished to try to make him passionate for the truth by showing him all its original beauty. This is the only way to make him worthy of love, which is the sole giver of joy in the world._ "

Jack closes the book -- gospel of Casanova apparently concluded for the evening -- and sets the cocoa aside. There's another flash of lightning with accompanying thunder as he curls into Ianto, lets him raise a hand to run his fingers through the hair just above his neck, against the grain, the way Jack likes. 

"In my home," Jack says, choosing his words carefully, "we used to get huge thunderstorms rolling in off the ocean."

"You had an ocean?"

"Practically at my doorstep. Warm saltwater. I never saw a swimming pool until I was grown." 

Ianto can almost feel the gears turning in Jack's head, clicking into place as he dredges up memories that have probably lain long-buried. Jack nuzzles into the side of his neck. 

"Humans always have traditions," he continues, slowly -- perhaps even translating in his head from his native tongue. Ianto is time-linear and tied to one planet but he's not by any means stupid or unobservant, and he knows Jack's first language is probably not any language spoken on Earth. "The thunderstorms used to frighten the hell out of me, because some _kindly_ old man told me they meant the moon was angry with us and I was pretty bright, you know -- "

" -- I'd never have guessed," Ianto drawls.

" -- and I knew that the moon orbited...the planet...and I'd read about meteor strikes so I used to think if she ever got _really_ mad she'd crash down and kill us all. But on the other hand..." Jack sits up a little, kissing the edge of his jaw just below his ear. "Ever sit around a campfire and tell ghost stories?"

"I'm familiar with the idea."

"That was thunderstorms for us. Everyone bringing around a jug of beer or something to eat and we'd pack into someone's hakti, all over the cushions and couches, and tell stories in the dark."

Ianto doesn't think Jack realises he's said the word _hakti_ , but he can derive from context, and he tucks it away next to two others.

**Hakti** (s). Common or living room, possibly communal bedroom.

**Duthu** (pl. **Duthun** ). Blanket. ("Does the duthu need washing?" "Yes, Jack," before Jack can think about it; or "Stop stealing all the duthun, Ianto," said sleepily early one morning, in Jack's tiny bed, where Ianto _had_ because the Hub was _cold_.)

**Nah** (pl.). Some form of eating utensil. ("Pass me the nah." "The what?" "The chopsticks? What did I say?" "No, sorry -- couldn't hear you, I was opening the carton.")

Someday he will have a Jack-to-English dictionary. Though it will contain more than just the words, he supposes. And be unsuitable for children.

"Ghost stories?" he asks. 

"Which were strangely comforting. They gave me other things to be scared of, anyway," Jack says. "They're...not as frightening now as they were when I was a kid. Not much is."

"Just as well. I don't know any ghost stories. Didn't you have telly?"

Jack laughs. "Another fifty years and you won't, either. Not the way it is now. Internet feeds; news sound-bites, YouTube sized; downloadable files for soaps and dramas and sitcoms. People rearrange the way they live their lives; if you can watch anything anywhere, read the updated news at any time of day, you start to realise that your time is your own again, you're not tied to the box anymore. It's freeing; people go back to telling stories, putting on plays, making music. We always crave society. We're communal animals."

And he crowns his sociology lecture by pulling Ianto's head slightly to the side, kissing him the way he does when he has the luxury of time on his side and wants to draw out the anticipation. 

"But you know stories," Jack says against his lips. 

"Well, it's genetic," Ianto replies. "We invented King Arthur, you know."

"Rydw i ymwybodol," Jack replies, grinning. That, Ianto doesn't have to tuck up; that's pure Welsh. _I'm aware._ Like Latin, Welsh has no common-use word for "yes"; you reply in the affirmative -- "I am", "I do", "I can", "I know". The two languages share a certain element of bribery in their phrase for "please", as well. _Amabo te_ , I will love you if you do this, or _os gwelwch yn dda_ , if you see pleasure in it. The translations aren't precise; this kind of expression never can be. 

He wonders if Jack's language, the language of hakti and duthu, uses a single word like English or a phrase like most other tongues. 

"Celwydda at mi," Jack commands.

"Your grasp of Welsh grammar and vocabulary is a disgrace. Casanova would approve, though," Ianto replies. "You're the man with all the stories, Jack; you tell me a lie, if you want to hear one."

Jack seems to consider this, dropping his head so that it's pressed against Ianto's chest, ear over his heart.

"Let me tell you both," Jack says finally. "Truth and lie."

_Nice change from the usual,_ Ianto thinks, but he doesn't say.

"I heard this story," Jack tugs on his shoulders to pull him down, curling up against his back, chin on his shoulder, "for the first time in what you'd call a foxhole, in my first war. One of the older women knew it, said it was the story of everything. So it's truth dressed up in a lie. Probably."

Jack's hand is warm around his waist, fingers tightening just slightly when another thunderbolt rattles the window again. 

"There are legends -- I looked 'em up once, couldn't cite them now -- that say all the great cities are echoes of one city. London, Tokyo, Paris..."

"Sounds like a fashion advert," Ianto says, to fill the silence after a thunderclap. Jack chuckles low in his ear.

"The first queen of cities, mirrored spires and underground trains, people living so close you never have to be alone. Plentiful food, no shortage of work."

"Someone has to sweep the streets."

"Are you telling this lie or am I?"

"Sorry. Do keep lying," Ianto says. 

"It's the blueprint for every great city on this or any other world -- well, maybe more of a charcoal sketch. All the things we hold in common come from the queen of cities." Jack inhales. "But it's also all these other things. Stories they tell throughout the known worlds. The fall of man -- or any other species. The first fratricide, you'd be shocked how many religions know it. Jealousy. Greed. The city went to war with another city, or maybe another world, or even just another race. Bigger than any other war fought in known history, bigger than the war -- " and here he hesitates. "There was a war fought in time itself, and this war was still bigger. It shattered reality, space convulsed and every natural law was violated. That's why this is a soldier's story. Every city echoes the queen of cities, and every war echoes the emperor of all wars. Some of the legends say the end of the war was the start of our universe; the big bang, grossly oversimplified, was a bomb. Mutually assured destruction, and we were born in blood and battle."

"Cheerful," Ianto murmurs. 

"I told you it was a story for soldiers. On the other hand..." Jack falls silent, thoughtful again. "Every race I've ever encountered -- all of them except one -- has the capacity for mercy and love. It's just a question of whether they use it." He huffs another laugh against Ianto's neck. "Personally, I like to see it as my individual mission to encourage them."

He tugs on Ianto's shoulder, turning him to lie flat on the bed, sliding until his elbows are on either side of Ianto's ribcage, kissing him fully.

"Truth, lies, love, war...it's all stories in the end," he says. Ianto can hear the rumble of thunder but it's more distant now, and the lightning is dim and soft. "Just stories..." a kiss, "you tell..." his hands in Ianto's hair, hips pressing down delightfully, "when the storms come..." a soft moan, "...to scare each other with."

"And if it's true?" Ianto asks, around a groan he can't quite (doesn't want to) suppress.

"Then we got our capacity for love from them too, don't you think?" Jack asks, claiming his body inch by inch. Ianto doesn't answer.

By the time he's coherent again, the storm has moved on and Jack is a warm, heavy weight, steady breath against his cheek, a hand over his heart.

"Do you think it's true?" he asks, and Jack barely stirs. 

"Coelio," Jack says, which is Welsh, and then, "Ba sich," which is not any language Ianto knows ( **Ba sich** ; first person singular, _I have faith_ ). Then he says, "Yes, I think it is. As much as I believe anything that lacks a rational basis. Until someone comes up with something better."

_Ba sich,_ Ianto thinks, and then because he can only think this in English: _Yes._

END

**Author's Note:**

> [Samuel Richardson's _Clarissa_](http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/r#a1959) is widely accepted as the longest novel in the English language. It is a nine-volume epistolary novel and, from the summary (I haven't personally read it), it does indeed appear to be all about _not having sex._ [Casanova's autobiography, _Histoire de Ma Vie_](http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/c#a1075), is probably mostly about having sex; I haven't read it either, but I did read bits of chapter nine. Jack's "translation" is adapted from the Gutenberg e-text English translation, and the quote is the product of judicious editing of about three paragraphs. Blame Jack. 
> 
> Apologies for any inaccuracies in Jack's Welsh; the Welsh phrase for "please" should at least be right, and I've striven for reasonable accuracy in the rest. The bits about Latin are true. Jack's native tongue is entirely made up.
> 
> As for Ianto's claim that the Welsh "invented" King Arthur, that's technically untrue, as historians believe there was a figure upon whom Arthur was based in history. However, Arthur is more than a figure; he's an axis for a whole whack of stories, some of which came in plot or theme from the [_Mabinogion_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mabinogion).


End file.
